Imperial Era
Current Version: 0.23.0 (December 2017) for Wesnoth 1.12 and 1.13 (1.12 is not supported, but works)

On August 15, 2005, a multi-player era was published to the Wesnoth 0.8 addons server. This era contained two factions that you've never heard of called the Loyalists and the Rebels, and two factions that might look a little familiar to us, the Romans and the Barbarians, ancestors of today's Lavinians and Marauders. Yes, that's right, the Imperial Era, heart of the Orbivm Project, with its roots back in the Dark Days before Wesnoth version 1.0, is celebrating its tenth birthday today (as best as your correspondent can guess, anyway)!

I'd like to give a huge shout out everyone who has been a part of Orbivm up to this point. Those who dreamed up the factions; the artists who brought those ideas to life; the campaign designers who slaved away in a WML environment that was a lot more primitive than the one that I enjoy today; the Wesnoth developers, whose efforts we have taken advantage of now for a decade; and each and every person that played and gave feedback to the multiplayer eras or any of our campaigns. A particular thankyou to those who took on the role of maintaining the Project before my tenure, Peter the Great and Chefu; To Temuchin Khan, whose enthusiasm has kept me going and whose critical eye has kept me on the right path to an enjoyable result for all our players; And of course, to Turin, who I hope is a little proud of this little monster.

Well, that's enough soppy stuff. I'm not sick of Orbivm yet, so by way of celebration, I'd like to share with you all where the project is at the moment, where we'd like to be heading in the future, and how you can help us to get there. Whether you're a budding portrait artist, spriter or animator, an aspiring WML wizard, a writer, a speaker of a language other than English, or just an enthusiastic player, there are ways that you could help the project, and we'd love to help you do so.

In chronological order, then:

The Wild Era is on the 1.12 servers, useable as a stand-alone multiplayer era or as part of the Ageless II pack. The era features a faction of primitive orcs that is only (very) partially animated, and a faction of monsters that is in need of a clean-up, even to base sprites, and is very much open to changes by a creative person with a vision. Any artist that would like to have a go at spriting terrifying monsters, or players that would like to try their hand at balancing with a simple a two-faction era with some strange mechanics, could find what they're looking for here. Any monsters that were really good could probably work their way into IE campaigns in time, so there's a built-in audience for this work.

The Wild Era campaign, Dreams of Urduk, is in need of a maintainer and a port for 1.12. The campaign is short and has very little complex code at present (and what is does have is showing its age), so it would be perfect for someone starting out with WML. The campaign works fine as is, but has untapped potential, so there is a large scope for a maintainer to do just a straight port or to try for something more ambitious.

The Classical Era never got off the ground. Scattered around the internet are the basics for the factions that might have composed such an era, though. I'm content to let sleeping dogs lie, but if you're interested in building a multi-player era but don't have much in the way of theme ideas, like the style of Orbivm, and are wiling to make or scrouge sprites from somewhere, well, it's just sitting there, and we'd love to have you.

The Imperial Era is in pretty good shape, if I say so myself, and being "actively" developed by our somewhat lax standards. Our latest release features the core era and a duplicate version for development, allowing us to test ideas and balance without breaking the campaigns. Via this method, I hope to be able to release a version of the era that brings the power level of the era down to something approximating that of the mainline factions within the next few releases. Currently, all seven factions are playable, the core three are relatively balanced, and the ideas for the other four (Arendians, Issaelfr, Orcei and Cavernei) are flowing. Our team of artists has been updating the occasional sprite and I have hopes of seeing more, some even with animations, in the near future. Our greatest need here is playtesters to download and try out the dev version of the Era from the 1.12 server and give us feedback on what works and what you'd change, but there's also plenty of work for writers interested in world-building cleaning up the dated unit definitions and both sprite and portrait artists right across the era.

Tale of Vaniyera, the IE Sidhe Elf campaign, is on the 1.12 server and is by far the most polished of the campaigns. It could benefit from extensive playtesting at all difficulty levels, someone to tighten up the dialogue, and could be greatly enhanced by a few portraits of the main characters or at least their unit types (Faolan the Sidhe Thunderblade, Vaniyera the Sidhe Veiledbalde, and Optimus the Lavinian Imperator). We're also keen to hear from anyone interested in translating the campaign into languages other than English and supporting the maintainer in learning how to support translators!

Up From Slavery, the gladiator Orcei campaign, needs a port to the 1.12 server from 1.10. We're looking for a maintainer that is interested in doing this and then looking at adapting a version of it for use as a 2-player co-operative campaign. This would probably also involve working closely with Temuchin Khan, who created the Orcei, on fine-tuning the faction, and could be a good stepping-stone for a WML user interested in testing their skills with Wesnoth's every-improving MP scenario functionality.

Fall of Silvium, the Lavinian Empire campaign, is my current project, I'm trying to address most of the major issues that have been raised over the last eight years. It's taking a while, but I hope that when it's done it will retake it's position as the flagship IE campaign. When it's released onto 1.12, which I hope to be by the end of September, I'd love to hear from translators and artists to help kick it up a notch.

Alfhelm the Wise, the epic-length Marauder campaign, is also looking for a maintainer willing to take on the project of keeping it up to date and making improvements. The story is solid but the campaign is just a big job to keep up to date (it's as long as the other IE campaigns combined). Ideally, this campaign would suit someone with some experience (or who wants to develop some experience) with tools for map-editing, as many of scenario maps are just too big, causing the campaign to drag a little.

Gali's Contract, the Cavernei campaign, is the one that I've got bookmarked in 'to do next', whenever I get to it. I have plans for a complete revamp which will leave the campaign looking completely different (it won't even be a Cavernei campaign any more) that you can read about in the campaign thread. At this point, if there's anyone who has suggestions for the campaign of for changes to either the Cavernei (to make them less like the mainline) or the Clockworks, now would be a great time to share.

The Fedual Era is on the 1.12 servers, useable as a stand-alone multiplayer era or as part of the Ageless II pack. it was never completed, with one faction (the Droch Fae) almost completely missing, and a distinct lack of balancing and playtesting on the others. There's some cool ideas here, and it plays an important part in the canon and lore of Orbivm, so, I don't want to lose it, but I don't have time to maintain it as well as the IE, so we're looking for someone interested in taking it on as maintainer and giving it the love that it deserves with respect to the history that it has. I can offer advice and support, so this would be a good project for someone new to WML who wants to learn.

And of course, if you'd like to create a new Orbivm campaign or scenario, we'd love that too, and I can guarantee that you'll find an enthusiastic audience in the Orbivm project team.

Thanks for sharing the world of Orbivm with us, and here's to the next ten years. To track where the project is at any point in the future, why not check out the Orbivm page on the wiki?

Owl, 25/8/2015

Old Front Page:

This is the new dev and feedback thread for the Imperial Era, the third age of Orbivm. I'm sure that most of you would have already played with our seven factions and tried out the five IE campaigns, but if not, give them a try today and leave your feedback here.
Changelog:

version 0.21.0 (UO - December 4 2012)
* We can rebuild it - we have the technology
* Renamed era from "Imperial Era Fixed" to "Imperial Era" for 1.11 version
* Changed references of "Wild Elves" to "Sidhe"
* Changed references of "Frost Elves" to "Issaelfr"
* Fixed Dark Thunderblade image issues
* Added missing Raindancer image
* Added some missing/placeholder attack images
* Created races for falcons and seals
* Added the orcei units to the textdomain
* Added a development version
* Revised Samnis/Secutor interrupt special to only work during the dawn/day/dusk
* Gave decurion/centurion auctoritas ability instead of leadership
* Made auxilia a separate 'auxilia' race
* Made formation ability work
* Decreased lavinianfoot physical resistances by 10 each
* Updated special notes
* Decreased marauderfoot/foresterfoot movement speed on hills/mountains
* Decreased speed of Arendian Chief line to 7

version 0.20.5 (UO - November 27 2012)
* Further changes to the Orcei that I forgot last time...oops
* Fixed hopefully all remaining instances of "Journeyman"
* Removed references to non-existent mainline portraits

version 0.20.4 (UO - November 5 2012)
* Dr. Sidhelove, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the fury
* Removed skirmisher from wanderer line
* Removed marksman from windrunner
* Added skirmisher to fury line
* Reduced experience requirements for fury line (50>40, 100>70, 150>100)

version 0.20.3 (UO - July 13 2012)
* Samnis line changed to 0 attack weight for sun-glare (AI was spamming it for some reason)
* Legionary line changed to 0 defense weight for gladius

version 0.20.2 (UO - July 12 2012)
* More Orcei changes by Temuchin, and credits updated.

version 0.19.1 (UnwiseOwl)
* The port, it does nuzzink!
* Updated era to be functional with Wesnoth 1.9 incorporating 0.18.0 and 0.18.1 changes (the current version on the 1.9 server is an outdated copy, but no-one of old is available and the changes made were well-documented)
* Added multiplayer tags to to imperial_era.cfg so that random_side will not interfere with campaigns.

version 0.17.1 (rev 739):
* Removed "balanced" and "unbalanced" eras - now only one Imperial Era
with all seven factions
* Balancing changes:
* Sidhe:
* Reduced Wanderer melee from 5-3 to 4-3
* Marauders:
* Removed Mauler from the available leader list, since
it has rage(3) making it easy to kill
* Gave Warrior an 8-2 torch attack so that Marauders
have a way to kill Sidhe Warrior Spirits

UnwiseOwl wrote:Just letting you know that the next revision of the IE will be coming out some time in the next few days (the wife is busy writing a thesis so I have some time on my hands at the moment). So far the only major change is removing skirmisher from the Sidhe Wanderer and giving it to the Fury.

Temuchin Khan wrote:That will be an interesting change. A skirmisher/berserker!

UnwiseOwl wrote:Indeed. It could make it too good, of course, but we'll see. As it is the Fury line is pitifully useless, so hopefully this will give it new life as a defence-piercing mage-killer. It also nerfs the wanderer a little, which I've been looking for a way to do for a while.

I have done a bit of playtesting with the Sidhe this past week.

My initial impression is that, since the Fury has relatively weak attacks compared to other berserkers, giving him skirmisher does not make the Fury overpowered, it just gives him a chance.

As for the Wanderer, taking skirmisher from him seems to be a good move. He is still quite useful, even without it.

These are, however, only initial impressions, and I'll be happy to revise them if further evidence proves me wrong.

Good to know. I've only used them in campaigns since I made the edit, but I'm feeling pretty good about this change considering how major it was. Amazingly, even as a fast, skirmishing, berserker, I also feel that the Fury is still not that good. Which is what I was going for. So...yay?

UnwiseOwl wrote:Good to know. I've only used them in campaigns since I made the edit, but I'm feeling pretty good about this change considering how major it was. Amazingly, even as a fast, skirmishing, berserker, I also feel that the Fury is still not that good. Which is what I was going for. So...yay?

Success!

I wrote:...the Fury has relatively weak attacks compared to other berserkers

I should qualify this statement. The Fury does not have weaker attacks, in terms of chances to hit or damage per hit. Rather, unlike the Ulfserker, it has a limit to the number of turns it can prolong combat. Also, except for arcane, the Fury has weaker resistances than the Ulfserker. What keeps the Fury from being overpowered, even with speed and skirmishing, is the combined effects of these other factors, which even the Fury's generally (but not always!) better terrain defense does not seem to offset.

As I said, my initial impression is that giving the Fury skirmisher does not seem to make him overpowered, it just gives him a chance.

This morning I had some trouble with the Orcei Gladiatores. For some reason, I couldn't recruit the Essedarius, even though I thought we had made it recruitable so that they could have a scout. I changed it on my computer, but check if it was due to a problem in the 0.20.4 package.

Owl, it is time to rebalance this whole pile of mess. Imperial is anything but a balanced era. There are some new methods and new parameters I have introduced in balancing; if you are interested, tell me and I can start my work right now, because the calculation might take weeks or even months to deal with.

Hey,
You're welcome to suggest some things that you think are issues and possible solutions, but I'd like to keep the changes the a minimum as much as possible, and I certainly don't intend to make whole-scale changes based on some mysterious secret parameters...
Feel free to suggest some changes, but I'd like to think that we'll do our best to consider each individual change and its effect on the gameplay and the feel of the era as a whole.

AxalaraFlame wrote:Owl, it is time to rebalance this whole pile of mess. Imperial is anything but a balanced era.

I'm not sure if this is your intention, but it sounds like you are insulting us. We've put in a lot of time and effort making this era over the years. Perhaps the balance could be improved in certain ways, but if you have something to contibute, please say it in a polite and friendly way.

There are some new methods and new parameters I have introduced in balancing....

Do they work? Have you had a chance to test them yet?

I suggested back in the summer that we could have two versions of Imperial Era, standard and experimental. I would be open to the idea of testing your methods in an experimental version of Imperial Era, but I would not be open to testing your methods if we had to delete the standard version of the era.

So again, I'd be willing to have two versions of the era:

IE Standard - pretty much the current stats, with only minor changes at most
IE Experimental - more radical changes, perhaps testing out your methods

But I'm not the current maintainer, so I wouldn't have the final say.

Unwise Owl wrote:Hrmm...I think I may have somehow accidentally reverted your last changes. I'll have a look and make sure these are right.

Yes, some of the Orcei files got reverted to an earlier stage. Also, the same old problem with Journeyman / Journeymann has cropped up again for the Cavernei. Maybe we should just spell it "Journeyman" all the time, even though he's not human, to finally just put this issue to rest!

If you want, I can send you some corrected files.

But there is also a bright side to this little glitch: It gives us a chance to reconsider some of the decisions we made back in the summer. You see, the Samnis, Secutor, and Secutor Leonis reverted to having first strike on the sun glare "attack." Now, I realized this while testing Orcei vs. Cavernei. In that match-up, if we don't give the Samnis, Secutor, and Secutor Leonis first strike on the sun glare "attack," then it is useless against a Cavernei Thunderer. So should we let them have first strike on sun glare after all?

Sorry for not replying you in the recent days. Eight months ago, I get the idea of wesnoth Brutal Algorithm calculations; I am in a good interest of translating works subsequently, and I was nearly taking all jobs of translation maintaince work in several months, thus the plan was postponed. I wish I could mean good help to you, but it may not be, because I am going back to school again.

I invented a formula to balance the the six races in Deafult Era and I believe I made great progress in Heroes Age. And I introduced many series of formulas to evaluate the real value and power of varies of kinds of abilities.

The main formula is actually a simple one, but take mass calculations. The most simpler and applicable form of it is RH*RM+1.2*(ATm+ATr*c)*OB/$=K. RH is the real HP of a certain unit, fully elaborated one unit's HP with relate resistances and terrian defence; so does RM. The process also has relate formulas to calculate, but too long for me to expand. 1.2 is a constant, to stablize the units of (RH*RM); it is still very suspectable, I decide to change it or make it a function which is decided by (RH*RM), and I am making further experiments on it. This constant is a empirical coefficient. It is applied to synchronize the units of hard-quality(resistances related HP, damage) and soft-quality(mobility).

ATm is melee attack, ATr is ranged attack; the use same units as HP do. OB is the offense bonus, considering the maxium offensing power which a unit could deal. Say, an elven horse has 24 damage in total, but obviously they are not so threatening as Gryphoons do because they are less deadly in offense of melee/range counter attack, could only mamage 12+ positively.

"c" describes the ranged weapon bonus. The default bonus of melee weapon is 0, because in wesnoth melee weapons are far more popularly used tha ranged base weapons. As we know, ranged weapons are comparatively less than melee, which bring more possibilities in taking down an enemy without sucking damage.

For varies of abilities, which may lead to very chaotic consequences, and nullify the result of General Formula, are taken by different kinds of "models". But sadly, some are not able to be evaluated by any means, say, "slow", a simple "backstab" without "skirmish"; even the brutal "skirmish" is already taken down by the brutaler calculations, based on a standardrized model of how many steps would a unit require to offense another guarded unit, with x,y,z numbers of guardians positioned on different hexes around. But, it is very complcated. There are more than 600 possible consequences, and even I put all to rest, I still cannot decide whether it is worthy to send one skirmisher into a horde of units, which would most probably not be decided by any players.

There are some other branches of them, which include something more complex than this simple one. I can hardly give a full elaboration on it in this thread, but it works and it is proven to be able to prove the balance of current default era (and possibly improve it someday).

I hope that would help.

Last edited by AxalaraFlame on November 28th, 2012, 3:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

AxalaraFlame wrote:Sorry for not replying you in the recent days. Eight months ago, I get the ideaof wesnoth Brutal Algorithm calculations; I am in a good interest of translating works subsequently, and I was nearly taking all jobs of translation maintaince work in several months, thus the plan was postponed. I wish I could mean good help to you, but it may not be, because I am going back to school again.

I invented a formula to balance the the six races in Deafult Era and I believe I made great progress in Heroes Age. And I introduced many series of formulas to evaluate the real value and power of varies of kinds of abilities.

The main formula is actually a simple one, but take mass calculations. The most simpler and applicable form of it is RH*RM+1.2*(ATm+ATr*c)*OB/$=K. RH is the real HP of a certain unit, fully elaborated one unit's HP with relate resistances and terrian defence; so does RM. The process also has relate formulas to calculate, but too long for me to expand. 1.2 is a constant, to stablize the units of (RH*RM); it is still very suspectable, I decide to change it or make it a function which is decided by (RH*RM), and I am making further experiments on it. This constant is a empirical coefficient. It is applied to synchronize the units of hard-quality(resistances related HP, damage) and soft-quality(mobility).

ATm is melee attack, ATr is ranged attack; the use same units as HP do. OB is the offense bonus, considering the maxium offensing power which a unit could deal. Say, an elven horse has 24 damage in total, but obviously they are not so threatening as Gryphoons do because they are less deadly in offense of melee/range counter attack, could only mamage 12+ positively.

"c" describes the ranged weapon bonus. The default bonus of melee weapon is 0, because in wesnoth melee weapons are far more popularly used tha ranged base weapons. As we know, ranged weapons are comparatively less than melee, which bring more possibilities in taking down an enemy without sucking damage.

For varies of abilities, which may lead to very chaotic consequences, and nullify the result of General Formula, are taken by different kinds of "models". But sadly, some are not able to be evaluated by any means, say, "slow", a simple "backstab" without "skirmish"; even the brutal "skirmish" is already taken down by the brutaler calculations, based on a standardrized model of how many steps would a unit require to offense another guarded unit, with x,y,z numbers of guardians positioned on different hexes around. But, it is very complcated. There are more than 600 possible consequences, and even I put all to rest, I still cannot decide whether it is worthy to send one skirmisher into a horde of units, which would most probably not be decided by any players.

There are some other branches of them, which include something more complex than this simple one. I can hardly give a full elaboration on it in this thread, but it works and it is proven to be able to prove the balance of current default era (and possibly improve it someday).

I hope that would help.

That at least gives me the general idea. I don't think I fully understand it, but it is interesting to get a sense.

In general, with the help of other models that I have no enough space to completely elaborate (more than two thick big notebooks' calculation ), it successfully mimics many match-ups' usual consequence. It could simulate that elves have some IMBA problems dealing with drakes after certain turns of battle(simpler, the whole faction is not able to deal with enough damage to take down a drake, which is tough enough), dwarves are not competent enough in taking drakes as well (overwhelming mobility), undead have problems solving tree issues (the same reason as I could tell for humans), drakes are generally weak against humans (using one of the model, mixed with 3/4 spears); while it astonishingly shows something unexpected as well, like undead are comparatively weaker than drakes while we always consider them prevailing for having 19-2 cold damage in night. I guess the reason is I have overestimated the power of mobility, but that suffice the most general situations as well.

I may need a very long thread with few weeks work to explain the essential reason, but as humans, we do understand the balance problem in a comprehensive way, rather than explaining all processes in a dumb way by ruling out all impossible situations (i.e. lance vs full-hp spear) further by listing out all situations for a successful attack when having different traits (i.e. 4 hex to touch a unit, your units generally have 4+ or 4- matters a lot; or, get hp or damage, make the combat more efficient but less positive), ruling out the ability issues and evaluate them precisely to figure out how much does it affect to the units' own survival and the surviving ability of enemy units (i.e. an ulf largely decreases the surviving possibility of an adept. while this point is complicated, because the protection level of your ulf, say, with the help of 3 footpads/2dwarvish fighters/guards+dwarves/thieves et cetera holding the ulf line our of enemy's attack range all affect a lot)...it simply makes it harder to understand.

If you guys are interested, I will start working on it, and afterwards I can post something to elaborate the models of one overwhelming race againt another and why should we cnange it/must change it in method A rather B.

FYI, ageless sucks. I am a loyal Imperial, EoMA and Myth user. While Imperial is most promising to be balanced

Last edited by AxalaraFlame on November 28th, 2012, 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Temuchin. About the sun glare thing with thunderers, you have a point, but I'm not convinced that it's worth changing it for the match-up with one unusual unit, given that with one large ranged attacks the thunderers are somewhat odd. I'll have a look at it, of course, but no-one goes up against thunderers in a ranged fight.
That said, Cavernei changes to make them different to the mainline are well overdue. There were some vague plans over in the old forums, if I recall, but nothing ever can of it. Perhaps as part of this we can tone down the thunderers.

EDIT: I've now released version 0.20.5, which solves the most pressing of the above issues, namely the Cavernei Journeymann issues and the missing Orcei changes, as well as a couple of the image issues brought up by AxalaraFlame. These changes break Gali's Contract, so I've also uploaded a new version of that campaign.

Assuming that things are ok with this release, the next version will incorporate both a "stable" and an "experimental" version of the era so that we can test any large-scale changes before inflicting them upon the campaigns. I don't know when this will happen, but I hope that I will get it released sometime in the next little while.

Last edited by UnwiseOwl on November 29th, 2012, 1:05 am, edited 1 time in total.